New regulations must be tough enough to ensure that all blacklisting is banned in Britain, says Dave Anderson
They haven’t gone away, you know. You may recall the blacklisting of trade unionists, mainly through the shadowy Economic League, back in the 1970s and ’80s. Many people were barred from jobs because of their legitimate trade union activity, often based on wildly inaccurate and unreliable information.
Hopes that these bad old days were behind us were dashed at a recent meeting at the House of Commons. Alan Ritchie, the general secretary of construction union UCATT, launched a detailed report on current blacklisting practices. This is packed with moving case studies of people who have been victimised for no good reason.
The union’s report follows an investigation carried out by the Information Commissioner. His official inquiry exposed the Consulting Association, run by Ian Kerr, which had been operating a blacklist of more than 3,000 construction workers by 44 major construction companies for decades. Household names in the building industry – which makes hundreds of millions of pounds, often from public sector contracts – were shown to be denying construction workers a living.
The investigation outlined how blacklisting in the building industry had become endemic and that Kerr and various big businesses had callously and systematically ruined the lives of thousands of skilled construction workers, many of whom were forced out of the industry because of blacklisting.
Following the exposure of the Consulting Association’s blacklist, construction workers were allowed to see their files. It emerged that many UCATT members, activists and officials were listed. Disgracefully, blacklisting is not illegal and Kerr could only be prosecuted under data protection laws. While the 1999 Employment Relations Act had created provisions for outlawing blacklisting, the necessary regulations were never introduced because the Government wrongly believed that blacklisting was a thing of the past.
The work of the building union and the Information Commissioner should have disabused anyone of that naiveté. Following lobbying from UCATT and MPs, ministers have now acted, promising new regulations. However, the fear is that these will not be tough enough. The Government is suggesting that blacklisting should only be outlawed for trade union activities, but it is clear from the Consulting Association’s files that blacklisting was carried out on many pretexts and not just by a narrow definition of union activity.
All forms of blacklisting should be outlawed. In the case of the Consulting Association, much of the information in its files was about health and safety issues – workers demonstrating about dangerous sites or whistleblowing about unsafe practices. It’s significant that construction industry bosses won’t put their heads above the parapet and defend these nasty and secretive practices, which almost certainly breach human rights conventions.
It is disgraceful that companies were prepared to blacklist people simply for trying to protect themselves and their colleagues from harm. The new regulations must ensure that this is never repeated. The Government needs to engage with unions and workers at the sharp end.
The best way to challenge pernicious employment practices is to join a trade union and complain immediately if suspicious. The trade union movement, in which I am proud to have played active roles as a miner and a care worker, do a vital job as a vast voluntary movement to improve health and safety. Unions and employers should work together wherever possible, but blacklisting poisons that possibility.
The construction industry suffers more deaths and serious accidents than other sectors, but has the fewest health and safety representatives and committees. Of course, these facts are connected. People fear losing their jobs if they raise concerns about risks at work, but they face losing their lives if they don’t. This is intolerable in 21st century Britain. I will work with unions and others to ensure that blacklisting is scrapped.
Any party that has aspires to be progressive should not need to argue about outlawing this type of discrimination and using tough new laws to do so. Ministers should work with the unions and Keith Ewing, author of the UCATT report, to put in place the real protection that many workers desperately need.
Dave Anderson is Labour MP for Blaydon. Trade unionists who have been the victims of blacklisting can contact him at andersonda@parliament.uk
